What's behind the stirring on Glenwood | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: What's behind the stirring on Glenwood | Previous Challenge Entry
By Steve Thomas
11/15/15
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What causing the stir on Glenwood

There was always something causing a stir on Glenwood. Glenwood was the name of the street I grew up on, and there was always something happening. There was the time when race relations reached a temperature far beyond the point of boiling. It wasn’t so much what was said that caused a stir. The stir was caused when people were forced to choose sides. There were no signs posted (that said I am or am not in favor of integration) to tell you who was who. You just knew it! You could tell by the way they looked at you as you walked by. You could smell the hatred on their breath like some cheap bottle of alcohol.

Ah, but there was something more important than race relations on this day. Today was Christmas day, and there was special about Christmas. Christmas day in our home stirred up hope. In the days leading up to Christmas, we would look through the magazines and newspapers at all the toys that were on sale. Typically, the picture in the newspaper was as close as we got to receive those toys. But even disappointment couldn’t stop us from being happy.

There were no gifts under the tree; only pine needles that had fallen out of the tree. Christmas came just in time, because the tree could not have lasted another day. On Christmas day, we would turn on the Christmas lights early and leave them on all day. Our lights were so old that when they blinked off and on, every light in the house blinked with them. We all stopped what we were doing when the lights blinked, and breathed a sigh of relief as all the lights came back on. I sometimes thought that the light of the world (John 8:12) also served as the light of the street and the light of our house.

The real stir on Christmas day took place in the kitchen, where my mother would work her magic. My mother could take a refrigerator full of nothing and turn it into a 5 course meal. She never had a list of ingredients. She made cakes by memory, and never made a bad one! Her gift was definitely the gift of cooking. She often made meals without the benefit of an electronic mixer. She mixed things by hand. When the Apostle told Timothy to stir up the gift (2nd Timothy 1:6), he no doubt had my mother’s broken green mixer in mind. Arthritis would later rob her of her strength, and my siblings and I would take turns working in the kitchen until we could afford to buy a mixer. There was much to be unhappy about, but we were having too much fun to notice. As the calendar pages turned, we spent less and less time together. The “STIR”, over the years, simply faded away.

This is not one of those stories where we all get great stuff and live happily ever after. Our parents are deceased, and the only stirring that takes place with me and my siblings is either a divisive disagreement or the sounds of silence. The only stirring that takes place among us is us getting away from each other. We are not in a hurry to get back to our lives, we are in a hurry to get away from each other. It’s funny how we had so little then, but seemingly have less now. All we had then was each other, and we no longer have that now.
What’s causing a stir on Glenwood? Unfortunately, nothing at all.

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